Whatever happened to the second paragraph, or the third, the one in which the reporter explains what the story is really about? It’s not necessary, you know, to let a politician’s assertion or anyone’s quote go without comment, without saying what the facts are. In one Washington bureau where I spent my time, the bureau [...]

Has anybody noticed how good we are getting at holding memorial services, candlelight vigils, prayer meetings and funerals for dead young Americans? We’ve had a lot of practice. Since Columbine in 1999, I count 22 fatal school shootings in the U.S., including Virginia Tech. The mourning ceremonies continue as I write. In four years, more [...]

For the moment, the press seems to be doing a good job covering and maybe even enjoying the multiple troubles besetting the President – Libby, Walter Reed, Gonzales, one after another. This is fun I would not like to forego. But, I suspect, the President will not change course. Being gloated over may only make [...]

Individual words and phrases are determining public policy and life or death in America. This is both weird and terrifying and something for the press to take note of and deal with. I have in mind one word and one phrase. The word is “makaka” and the phrase is “the war on terror.” Saying “makaka” [...]

Growing up, my contemporaries and I had dinned into us the belief that ends do not justify the means. The principle seemed to us as ingrained and natural as breathing. Not so nowadays, where the precept seems to have been turned on its head. Does a law stand in the way of achieving an objective? [...]

As far as I can tell, President Bush first pronounced it as American policy on August 12, 2005, when he replied to an Israeli television interviewer who asked what the president would do if diplomacy didn’t turn Iran away from its nuclear ambitions. “Well, all options are on the table,” Bush said. “Including the use [...]

Where are those critics now, the right-wing know-nothings and the bloviating Bill Bennett who wanted to arrest the Washington Post’s Dana Priest for treason when she outed the CIA in November 2005 for hiding captives in “black sites”? She was a shill for the Democrats, one wingnut cried. Why are they not congratulating Priest and [...]

I grew up in South Africa and saw how the apartheid government consolidated power in the executive. When I became an American, impressed with the skill of the Founding Fathers in devising a system that would resist dictatorship, I came to admire the division of powers as one of our Constitution’s most brilliant insights. But [...]

The news that North Korea has agreed to a grand bargain of dismantling its nuclear weapons program in exchange for new international relationships and fuel can be seen in stark contrast to the U.S. handling of the prospect of diplomatic engagement with Iran. So, too, does the news coverage offer a similar contrast. The press [...]

It was a rare White House moment: A senior administration official actually inviting the press corps to hold the White House accountable on its Iraq policy. Can we please take him up on it? At a White House press briefing on January 10 on Bush’s plan to send more troops into Iraq, one of the [...]